When I moved to Malibu California in 1994, I changed my company’s name from ABC Dog Training to Malibu Dog Training to reflect the locale of my new clientele.

After arriving in Malibu, I found the number one issue pet owners needed help with was “housebreaking” (or house-soiling). Within the next few years, I became an expert at housebreaking dogs. My clients had the big-big houses, with big-big expectations from their trainer (me).

They led very busy lives and many of them weren’t fully on board with the concept that they might have to participate in the training of their dogs. Often times the task was delegated to live-in house keepers, personal assistants or the kids. For the house-keepers and assistants, their hands were already full maintaining the homes and lives of their employers. As for the kids, (with a few exceptions) they were living the lives of Malibu kids and training the dog was not first on their list of priorities.

So, the challenge for me was to create a winning formula for the owner, housekeeper, assistant or child so the dog learned good behavior quickly and with the least amount of wear and tear on the dog (and the dog’s care-taker).

When housebreaking is done correctly, the puppies shouldn’t eliminate inside the home (or very few times), and should be eliminating outside in the place of your choosing. With just a few weeks of practice, a young puppy can be 100% housebroken by 10 to 12 weeks of age.

Auggie’s a good puppy

The speed at which housebreaking can take, depends on several things; the owners knowledge, the owners attention to the process, the breed, age of dog, where the puppy came from (pet shop, shelter, breeder) and how big your home is. There are many short cuts that can help speed things along. If you’ve had more than 4 weeks of practice with no success, you’ll need a professional dog trainer to teach you how to train your dog.

Other than calling me to set up an appointment, I’ve made a video tutorial to help people properly crate train their dog.